It was an odd sort of war, if indeed it could be called a war at all; as there was no newt state nor any acknowledged newt government which could be officially held responsible for the hostilities. The first country to find itself in a state of war with the salamanders was Great Britain. Within the first few hours the newts had sunk almost all British ships at anchor in harbour; there was nothing that they could have done about that. A number of ships on the open sea were, for the time being, comparatively safe, mainly because they were over deep ocean; in this way part of the Royal Navy was saved and was able then to break through the newt blockade of Malta and gather over the depths of the Ionian Sea; but even these units were soon sought out by the newts in their mini-submarines and sunk one by one. Within six weeks the United Kingdom had lost four fifths of its total tonnage. John Bull was given another moment in history to display his famous doggedness. His Majesty’s Government refused to negotiate with the newts and did not call off its ban on giving them any supplies. “An Englishman,” declared the prime minister on behalf of the entire nation, “will protect animals but will not haggle with them.” Just a few weeks later there was a desperate shortage of foodstuffs in the British Isles. The last few scraps of bread and last few spoonfuls of tea or milk were reserved for the children to consume each day; the British nation bore it with exemplary dignity, despite having sunk so low that they had even eaten all their racehorses. The Prince of Wales dug the first furrow in the greens of the Royal Golf Club with his own hand so that carrots could be grown there for the orphans in London. Wimbledon tennis courts were turned over to the cultivation of potatoes, and wheat was sown over the race course at Ascot. “We can endure the greatest of sacrifices,” the leader of the Conservative Party declared in parliament, “but British honour is something we will never give up.”
The blockade of British coasts was total, and so England was left with only one way of obtaining supplies and maintaining communications, and that was by air. “We need a hundred thousand aircraft,” the minister for aviation declared, and all forces were applied to fulfilling this edict; but then the governments of other European powers raised bitter protests that this would disturb the balance of power in the skies; the government of the United Kingdom would have to abandon its plans and promise never to build more than twenty thousand aircraft and even that not within the next five years. They would simply have to remain hungry or pay horrifying prices for foodstuffs supplied by the aircraft of other states; a loaf of bread cost ten shillings, a rat sausage one guinea, a box of caviar twenty-five pounds sterling. This was simply a golden age for business, industry and agriculture on the continent. All military shipping had been removed at the very start of hostilities, and so the war against the newts had to be carried out on dry land and from the air. Armies fired into the water with their cannons and machine guns but without, it seemed, doing the newts any serious harm; although the bombs dropped into the sea from aircraft seemed somewhat more successful. The newts responded by firing on British ports from their underwater cannons, reducing them to piles of rubble. They even fired on London from the Thames Estuary; then the chiefs of staff tried to attack the salamanders with harmful bacteria, petroleum and acid poured into the Thames and several other bays and estuaries. The newts responded by releasing a cloak of poisonous gas over a hundred miles of British coastline. It was no more than a demonstration, but it was enough; for the first time in history the British government was forced to call on foreign powers to intervene on its behalf, citing the ban on the use of poisonous gas in warfare.
That night, the rasping, angry and heavy voice of Chief Salamander was heard once again on the airwaves: “Hello you people! England must stop its foolishness! If you poison our water we will poison your air. We use no more than your own weapons. We are not barbarians. We have no wish to wage war with people. All we wish is to be allowed to live. We offer you peace. You will supply us with your products and sell us your land. We are willing to pay you well. We offer you more than peace. We offer you trade. We offer you gold for your land. Hello, calling the government of Great Britain. Tell me your price for the southern part of Lincolnshire around The Wash. You have three days to consider the matter. For this period I will suspend all hostilities apart from the blockades.”
At that moment the rumbling of underwater cannons off the coasts of England ceased. The land cannons were also silent. There was a strange, almost eerie quiet. The British government declared in parliament that it had no intention of negotiating with animals. The residents of south Lincolnshire were warned that there was clear danger of a major attack by the newts and that they should evacuate coastal areas and move inland; the trains, cars and buses provided, however, carried only children and some women. All the men remained where they were; it simply did not enter their heads that an Englishman might lose the land he lives on. One minute after the three-day truce had expired the shooting began; these were shots from English cannons fired by the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment to the sound of the regimental march, The Red Rose. There was then the thunder of an enormous explosion. The mouth of the River Nene was flooded up as far as Wisbech and the whole of the area around The Wash was inundated by the sea. A number of notable sites collapsed into the water, including the famous Wisbech Abbey, Holland Castle and the George and Dragon.
The following day the British government answered questions in parliament: all military measures for the protection of British coasts had been taken; the possibility of further and much more extensive attacks on British soil could not be excluded; that His Majesty’s Government was nonetheless unable to negotiate with an enemy which was unwilling even to spare civilians and women. (Agreement) This was a time that would not merely determine the fate of England, but of the entire civilised world. The United Kingdom would be willing to enter into international agreements which would limit these terrible and barbaric attacks which threaten the future of mankind itself.
Some weeks later, the nations of the world met together in Vaduz.
The conference took place in Vaduz because in the height of the Alps there was no danger from the newts and because most of the world’s most powerful and socially important people had already fled there from coastal areas. It was generally agreed that the conference progressed quickly to reach solutions to all the worlds’ current problems. Every country (with the exceptions of Switzerland, Afghanistan, Bolivia and some other land-locked countries) agreed emphatically not to recognise the newts as an independent military power, mainly because they would then have to acknowledge their own newts as members of a salamander state; it was even possible that a salamander state of this sort would want to exercise its sovereignty over all the shores and waters occupied by newts. For this reason it was legally and practically impossible to declare war against the newts or put any other sort of international pressure on them; each state would have the right to take measures only against its own newts; it would be a purely internal matter. This meant that it was impossible to speak of any collective diplomatic or military campaign against the newts. Any state that came under attack from the salamanders could receive international aid only in the form of overseas loans for them to help defend themselves.
At this, England put forward the proposal that every state should at least bind itself to stop supplying the newts with weapons or explosives. After full consideration the proposal was turned down, mainly because those obligations were already contained in the London Convention; secondly because it would not be possible to prevent any state from providing its newts with equipment and weaponry to defend its own shores “according to its needs”; and thirdly, seafaring nations would “understandably wish to maintain good relations with residents of the sea”, so that it was deemed appropriate “not to be precipitate in taking any measure that the newts might feel to be repressive”; every state was nonetheless willing to promise to supply weaponry and explosives to any state under attack from the newts.
A suggestion put forward by the Colombian delegates in private session, that at least unofficial negotiations with the newts should take place, was accepted. Chief Salamander was to be invited to send his representatives to the conference. Great Britain protested loudly at this and refused outright to sit at the same table with the newts; but in the end the British delegation had to be content to depart, temporarily, to Engadin, for reasons of health. That night, all seafaring powers sent out an invitation to His Excellency Chief Salamander to name his representatives and send them to Vaduz. The answer was a rasping “Yes; this time we will come to meet you; next time we will expect your delegates to come into the water to meet me.” The official announcement followed: “The accredited newt representatives will arrive in two days time at Buchs station by the Orient Express.”
Every preparation for the arrival of the newts was made with all haste; the most luxurious bathrooms in the city were prepared for them and a special train was chartered to bring cisterns of sea water for the newt delegates to bathe in. The reception for them that evening at the railway station in Vaduz had been meant to be unofficial, but it was still attended by many of the delegates’ secretaries, representatives of government offices and around two hundred journalists, photographers and film makers. At exactly twenty-five minutes past six the Orient Express arrived at the station and came to a halt beside the red carpet. From the saloon car emerged three tall and elegant gentlemen with a number of sophisticated-looking secretaries c............